Apple Reportedly Working on Smart Home Hardware for HomeKit

Apple is said to be developing Smart Home hardware that will work with their recently launched HomeKit standard, reports 9to5mac. Apple has reportedly assembled a team to work on different hardware products for the home that integrates with current Apple devices on the market.

The development of these home products could be paused at anytime, but Apple is said to be beyond the exploratory phase of development.

Sources have not yet specified what category of home devices Apple is developing, but the people did note that Apple believes the home to be an incredibly important and lucrative potential market and that the devices will see “mainstream” usage.

The sources claim that Apple is unlikely going to make an effort to compete directly with Google's Nest thermostat or smoke detector. Instead, it wants to build products that it feels will gain wider usage such as advanced speaker systems or control panels for homes. It is possible that Apple's recent Beats acquisitions could come into play here.

The rest of 2014 could be a busy one for Apple with a rumored 12-inch Retina MacBook Air, two new iPhones and the highly-anticipated iWatch, so any HomeKit-ready hardware will most likely come further down Apple's product roadmap.

I remember reading about apple patents for tighter geolocation mapping, ie by rooms in the home.
this would now make complete sense as you could tell siri to turn the lights down and it would know which room you are in.